


la faim compliquée

by feartown



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: F/M, i don't know what is happening, poorly concealed love letters to caroline dhavernas's face, weird non-sexy sex things?, will graham: destined to never catch a damn break
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-10
Updated: 2014-03-30
Packaged: 2017-12-14 13:00:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/837159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feartown/pseuds/feartown
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alana Bloom is a person very sure of her own shortcomings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I guess a couple of important things to point out are that I am mildly overwhelmed by how much I love Alana Bloom, I haven't written fanfiction in about six months, and I want everybody on this show to make out. Everybody!!!! 
> 
> Also it is very hard to translate Danish accents into written words, who knew.

Alana Bloom always tells herself she has no inclination towards dating.  _Something for somebody else_ , she remembers telling Will recently.

She grew up watching everyone else date – her mother, her best friends, her colourful college roommate who ended up with what would have amounted to a small parade if she’d lined them all up and marched them down the street – while she sat back and stubbornly told everyone she didn’t  _do_ relationships.

In a way she sort of did do them; she fell into one, two, three – but nothing stuck, nothing felt like the conventional courtships of her colleagues. Something for somebody else.

“At least you know what you want,” someone told her once.

 

 

It doesn’t make Will Graham any easier to deal with, though. He seems to exist on an entirely different plane and being experienced at unorthodox relationships seems to do nothing to help her climb to the same place and understand him. Not even her catalogue of psych knowledge has helped her beyond diagnosing her own complex feelings. Alana has never wanted to be the girl hung up on someone unattainable, even if it is just because Will has some stability issues to work out, the search for ground to rest his unsteady mind upon. It irritates her that she is beginning to define herself by him.

 

Maybe this is why she finds herself visiting Hannibal a little more often after Jack pushes Will too far back into the field, maybe she is just comforted by another mind familiar with psychology. Hannibal proffers theories without judgement, helps her clinically sort through all the things she doesn’t want to look at by herself. Not only that but he provides a welcome outlet for all her worries concerning Abigail Hobbs when she has them. He soothes her the way all good therapists should.

 

 

His spotless kitchen is probably as big as most of her house, she notes, leaning back against the counter one night.

“Don’t you ever get tired of this?” she asks, watching him peruse his refrigerator with the same kind of analysis she’s seen him use with people.

He turns and regards her. Hannibal Lecter never uses words unnecessarily.

“The foie gras crumbled sheep’s brain salads and goat butt stew; don’t you ever want to just spend five minutes making mac and cheese instead?” she expounds.

“Foie gras is not very easy to crumble.”

She smiles, sips her beer. They both know exactly what she means, and Hannibal smiles back at her, shuts the fridge door.  

“Could you get me an onion from the cupboard?”

Alana obliges, and when she holds it out to him, the skin crinkling against her fingertips, he plucks it from them with a look she can’t quite decipher. She leans her hip against the bench, runs the pad of a finger over the glass of beer sitting in front of her. Hannibal, for all his charm and quiet eagerness to spend time with her, is full of actions and moments she can never fully figure out. However, rather than unnerving her, she’s found it draws her in.

“I have been told on more than one occasion that I make an excellent omelette,” he says, retrieving a tray of eggs and breaking them methodically into a bowl.

“Pretty hard to screw up an omelette,” she retorts with a smirk, enjoying the way Hannibal’s mouth curls at the corners without becoming a real emotion. She feels his smile, though, a warmth from his eyes that spreads down to somewhere below her navel.

“That is very true, but at the same time: how easy is it to perfect one?”

“Touché.” The not-smile blossoms to a real one.

Finishing her beer, Alana sets the glass at the edge of the sink and steps up beside Hannibal, takes a moment to just let his proximity wash over her – the soft sound of his shirt moving against his arms, the smell of some no doubt expensive foreign aftershave lingering in her senses every time he moves. There is something indefinably alluring about the man that for a moment she thinks she could abandon any further thought of Will Graham and indulge in the affair everyone already said she’d had. His question: _why didn't we?_ that sounded more like _why shouldn't we?_ comes back to her, and right now she can't think of an answer to either of them. 

She breathes deep, banishes the idea before it can properly take root. She trusts Hannibal in a way she doesn’t trust Will right now, but that isn’t an invitation to trust him into her bed. Picking up a knife, she takes back her onion and peels it. Hannibal says nothing, but she knows he’s watching her.

“You are the only guest I ever really let help me in the kitchen, did you know that?”

“Yes.” She didn’t know, not beyond a quiet inkling, but it doesn’t surprise her after the slowly growing number of things he’s assured her he does just for her when she comes over. The fruity taste of her beer lingers in her mouth, and she swallows, her mind unwittingly backtracking. Heat flushes into her cheeks.

Hannibal’s voice is low when he speaks again, and she tries not to think it’s because he’s noticed her body betraying her thoughts. “I would prefer if you kept tonight’s dish to yourself, Alana. A secret between friends.”

He says it as though they’re doing something wrong, like the omelette carries sinister intentions, and she looks at him sideways. “Can’t let something like this get out?”

“I have certain appearances to uphold,” he replies, mouth curling again.

Alana watches him take a measured sip of merlot, tells herself she doesn’t envy the vessel in his hands, and slices through the heart of the onion still between her fingers.

Just as the familiar sharp tingle starts at the edges of her eyes, Hannibal is deftly pulling matches and a candle out of the drawer in front of her, a hand gently pressing her hip out of the way. He lights a match, cups the flame as he guides it to the candle wick, and the woody smell of smoke mixes with his aftershave to make her feel lightheaded.

“I always keep remedies close,” he says. “Onions are treacherous.”

“Secret omelettes, treacherous onions; you really enjoy personifying your food, Hannibal.”

He smiles; she sends the knife back into the onion.

A moment later, she sees a smear of red and frowns, then sees the source is her middle finger, right above the top knuckle. “Shit.”

Hannibal looks over from whisking the eggs, and makes a noise of concern before taking hold of her wrist and directing her to the sink, turning on the tap and letting it wash away the blood. He bends, white shirt stretching over his shoulder blades. She doesn’t feel the cut stinging.

“It’s not deep, I will find some ointment and a bandage. Keep running it under the water.”

He disappears down the hall, and she takes a moment to catch her breath. He was probably heading for his bedroom, she muses, and then immediately wonders why she thought that. She realizes she has never actually seen the inside of his room, only the closed door she knows it hides behind. It's hard for her to picture him in it, Hannibal Lecter seems like the kind of person who could have a mirrored wall and it wouldn't seem tacky or crass, but beyond the odd, abstract thoughts like that she can't imagine anything tangible. She looks at the thin red line on her finger and sighs. Her own fault for thinking too much about things she shouldn’t, she supposes, a visible reminder that she’s already entangled in a myriad of feelings for one man, she doesn’t need another one to complicate things even more.

Not, of course, that she doesn’t have faith that Hannibal would be perfectly capable of keeping things unemotional if she asked him to, she only has reservations about her own self-control. Alana Bloom is a person very sure of her own shortcomings.

Hannibal returns to her side, bumping off the tap and drying her finger before swiping ointment over the cut and wrapping a bandage around it, all in the space of what feels like five seconds. Surgeon’s hands. She flexes her fingers experimentally.

“Will you live?” he teases.

“It’s hard to say at this point. You were right though – apparently onions are treacherous.”

He smiles. There’s something behind it that might be hunger, something a touch darker than simple amusement at her bad jokes, but when she searches for it again it’s gone, his eyes are warm and she is placated.

 

At the end of the night, the back of her throat is still tingling from the habanero peppers Hannibal mixed into their omelette as she stands in his doorway. Ever a gentleman, he helps her into her coat, settles it across her shoulders before Alana pulls out her hair. He loiters in her personal space as she turns around, an imposing figure blocking out the light from inside. It isn’t an insidious shadow he casts upon her, but an enticing one, a shadow she would like to envelop herself in. With the amount of beer coursing through her bloodstream it's impossible to stop her thoughts from running wild; standing awkwardly in the dead of night on his porch.

Her heart speeds up and she tilts her head to look at Hannibal’s face, veiled by the darkness. It’s up to him. She won’t make a move because then she can’t be blamed for it, can’t feel guilty for crossing any lines drawn by her own hand. She won’t look at Will later, after, and think: it was easier to kiss him than you.

Hannibal leans in. “I like having you for dinner, Alana. We should really make it a permanent fixture.”

Her voice comes out throatier than she intends. “You just wanna keep more secrets.”

“I won't deny it would be nice to have something… uncomplicated to look forward to once in a while.”

“That better not be a nice way of saying I’m stupid, Hannibal. We can’t all be rambling philosophical geniuses.”

“On the contrary, Dr Bloom, you remain one of the smartest people I know; you just don’t feel it necessary to ostentate your intellect at every opportunity. I find that I relish it.”

Something about his tone sends an excited shiver down her spine, and she finds herself looking at his mouth. The corners tip, and he bends to kiss the line between her lips and her cheek in farewell. The lavender from the sorbet she found while rifling through his freezer earlier still lingers on his breath, and her eyes close of their own accord. When he pulls back an inch or two, they open again and he must read something in her expression, ever the psychoanalyzer, because when he leans in this time he kisses her mouth.

It’s easy to kiss him back, to open her mouth against his and let him find her tongue with his own. It would be just as easy to shrug off her coat, step them back inside and let him fuck her up against his solid oak front door, too, because she has some well-reasoned theories as to how well his dexterity in the kitchen might translate elsewhere. But that isn’t what she came here for, and just plain isn’t a very good idea, so she pulls away – if only slightly.

“You are thinking,” Hannibal says quietly. “A dangerous pastime in circumstances such as these.”

“I’m not going to sleep with you, Hannibal.”

She seems to be forming a habit of kissing men she can’t follow through with, lately.

“No. You are going to say your goodbyes, go home to your own bed, and think about sleeping with someone else instead.”

He gives her the courtesy of leaving Will’s name out of it. She assumes he’s told Hannibal of their… incident, though. Raccoons in the chimney, mouths in the dark.

“I understand.”

Alana rolls her eyes at him. “You understand but you don’t agree with it.”

He takes a step back from her, gives her breathing room. “You are a very beautiful woman, Alana, and wonderful company in any capacity – is it wrong for me to be disappointed that you don’t want to… explore another aspect of our relationship?”

“That’s certainly one way to put it.” She’s annoyed that she’s nudged the door ajar on this one, curses the unwarranted effect Hannibal has on her.

“I’m not going to force you.”

“Oh, you wouldn’t be forcing me.”

He smiles. _Damn_ him. Stepping toward him, she lends him one short kiss, a chaste way to put an end to things, and steps back again.

“I’m sorry.”

Hannibal shakes his head. “Don’t ever apologise for making an informed decision. You know where to find me if you change your mind.”

“Night, Hannibal.”

“Goodnight, Dr Bloom.”

 

 

She visits his office a few days later, intending to talk to him about her latest meeting with Abigail, but as she reaches his waiting room she runs almost straight into Will.

“Hi,” she says abruptly.

He smiles warily, “You here for some good old-fashioned psychoanalysis too?”

“I probably should be.”

If possible, she thinks Will has developed more twitches than the last time she saw him.

“We should talk soon,” she says, expression soft.

Will relaxes slightly at her tone. “You know where to find me.”

Yes, it seems she knows where to find several people at the moment. She thinks about the soot coating Will’s hand, the grit of it against her cheek when he kissed her; remembers the press of his fingers into her back as she hugged him in his classroom. He held on like he was drowning, and she can see the same fear of it in his eyes now.

“Look after yourself,” she tells him, and he gives her an unconvincing smile before heading off.

“Alana,” Hannibal says from the doorway; smile on his face.

She grins back, almost sheepish. “I don’t suppose you have ten minutes for me?”

“Our friend Will is my last appointment on Fridays, so I have as many minutes as you require.”

Stepping back, he gestures inside and she slips past him, depositing herself on the couch.

“Is this regarding Abigail? Or the other night?”

“Nice try, Hannibal. Abigail is the only thing I’m here to discuss.” It's a lie, she knew that as soon as she set foot in his office, but she says it all the same. The banter keeps her grounded.

“Pity.” He sits next to her, removing his jacket and placing it neatly beside him. Thankfully, without beer in her system, it only takes Alana a few seconds to get over the reminder of his cologne instead of a full minute. She breathes.

“Will looks sick,” she says, recalling the sheen of sweat at Will’s pale temples.

“I fear he may be coming down with something,” Hannibal replies calmly. “Stress takes a malicious toll on the immune system.” He stands, wanders to his desk, palming a hand over his open ledger. 

The silence spreads, and Alana notes that he seems a little less… engaged with her presence than usual. “Are you ok, Hannibal?”

He looks to her. "I was in a session with Dr Du Maurier this morning; as usual she provided me with a lot of ideas to perlustrate. Unfortunately it means I have perhaps been a little more detached from my work today than I should be. And apparently also right now. I apologize."  
  
She knows Hannibal sees a therapist - she even knows her, if only peripherally. The news that she'd been attacked by a patient travelled quickly through the proverbial phone tree of psychiatrists in the larger Baltimore area after it happened, so Bedelia Du Maurier is definitely a name she is familiar with. Still, it’s odd to hear a therapist talking about seeing another therapist.  
  
"I think you should speak with her, actually," he posits. "She has some experience with younger patients; definitely more than I do."  
  
Hannibal talks about Bedelia with a certain underlying reverence, the respect he has for his colleague permeates every word he ascribes to her. Alana briefly wonders how he talks about her when she's not there.  
  
"You would appreciate her insights, I think," Hannibal says, almost to himself.  
  
"I thought she was retired."  
  
"She would see it as a favour to me, not a breach of her retirement. I am certain she would be pleased to talk to you anyway, you have come up in conversation more than once."  
  
"Have you been _gossiping_ about me, Dr Lecter?"  
  
He smiles, enigmatic, and she knows he’s going to change the subject. “My kitchen has felt awfully empty these past few days. When are you coming for dinner again?”

Alana holds back a laugh. If she were a girl who dated like all the others, had impossibly girly crushes on professors in college, this would be the moment where she bashfully replied with something coy; maybe averted her eyes and acted like she had no idea what he meant. The thought vaguely sickens her; she thinks about how comfortable she is around him, how easily simply staring him down and calling him out on his games comes to her.

“Dinner with you is starting to border on dangerous, Hannibal.”

When he grins at her, all her past worries of not being like everybody else seem utterly ridiculous, and she smirks back at him. Yes, dating is something for somebody else, but the alternative is just as interesting.

“I do have Monday night free, though.”

She warms at the expression on Hannibal’s face, and stands.

Will can wait.


	2. part ii

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Plans are important to Hannibal, but Alana Bloom seems to have some kind of predilection for making him throw them out when he finds himself in her company.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hannibal's POV because what better way is there to get allllllllll my weird feels out. You guys get it right. The feelings you get when you look at Dhavernas's face and it's like badass sunshine and ponies galloping across fields of clouds and rose petals and everything's ok bc Alana's here and she's wearing a wrap dress
> 
> I'm sure you get it

Plans are important to Hannibal, but Alana Bloom seems to have some kind of predilection for making him throw them out when he finds himself in her company.

“She seems unfazed by me. Usually people are… _different_ … around me. Perhaps they straighten their posture; a change in tone of voice; small things, insignificant to most. But there if you look for them. Alana, however…”

“Bruises straight through,” Bedelia finishes. “You like her.”

Hannibal sits back, contemplates. “She does not fear the mind of a psychiatrist.”

“Well, Alana herself is a psychiatrist, Hannibal. And you’re skirting the point. You like Dr Bloom, and it seems she likes you. What, exactly, is the problem you have?”

“Will Graham,” Hannibal replies, and he can see a flicker of something in Bedelia’s eyes, a tiredness that comes from treading over the same path too many times. “Alana has feelings for him and I shouldn’t get in the way of them.”

Bedelia raises a delicate eyebrow. “Alana is, I assume, a woman perfectly capable of making her own decisions about these matters?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Then don’t make them for her. Continue the way you have been, Hannibal. It would… benefit you to spend more time in the company of people you like.”

 

Yes, he thinks. The company of Alana Bloom seems to be almost entirely benefits.

 

 

 

 

 

After he dials, the phone rings three times before he hears her voice crackle onto the end of the line.

“Hello?”

“Dr Bloom. I hope I haven’t caught you at a bad time.”

“Not at all, Hannibal, what do you need?”

“Your expertise, on a personal matter. Could you come down to my office?”

 

 

 

 

 

Alana is sitting nonchalantly in his therapist’s chair when he comes back from a walk that afternoon, and she grins when she sees him.

“I still have your spare key,” she says, and he takes a mental note to write an actual note of that somewhere, for… future reference.

He smiles, takes off his coat and stands near her, hands in his pockets.

“A curious thing happened on my walk today. I dropped something - just an unimportant piece of paper - but before I could even react, a young girl had picked it up and given it back to me before continuing on her way. It made me think about how easily we take incivility for granted; rudeness is so common that we don’t even notice it. The simple act of giving back a piece of paper – how has that become so significant?”

Alana shrugs, clearly not expecting the anecdote. “We’re in a different age, Hannibal. Values have changed. I’m not saying that I agree with it, of course, just that we spend a lot more time with _things_ ; we place our worth on the material rather than the interpersonal.”

“A shame,” he says. “I find the interpersonal infinitely more nourishing.”

“Is this what you called me down here for? Your personal matter is the steady decline of humanity? Because I don’t know how much help I can be with that.”

He chuckles. “No, my dear Alana, I fear neither of us are much help in that regard, no matter how hard we try to pluck out the weeds.”

Re-crossing her legs, Alana looks at him expectantly.

“I called you because I am worried about Will.”

“A sentence I’m hearing a lot lately.”

“I am beginning to worry that what Will is dealing with is something closer to mental illness than any other ailment.”

Alana sighs, and it’s apparent that her own thoughts have been drifting toward that idea. Naturally, he doesn’t want to discourage them from anchoring themselves there.

“It just sounds so… _damaging_ ,” she says, and he lets the silence weigh in for a moment.

“I assume you are familiar with the myth of the World Turtle?” he asks, sitting down at his desk and running his fingers down the length of a pencil. He tends to keep his drawing mostly to himself, for obvious reasons, but he finds when Alana is around he feels less protective. She doesn’t carry the air of judgement that many others do.

“Yes, though I’m not sure how it’s relevant to this conversation.”

“The damage you speak of, you don’t have to look at it as a wound or a malady. Look at it like this: Will thinks a turtle holds up the universe. Not literally, of course, but he works with different information, sees things that aren’t there. He simply lives in quite a different world than you or I.”

“The only problem is that it seems his world is held up over a pit of snakes.”

Hannibal nods his assent. “He is in many ways, I suppose, the victim of a plague, we just do not always see the symptoms.”

Alana gives him a wry smile. “I think you’re mixing your metaphors.”

Touching his pencil to a sheet of paper, he draws a long curve, precise and confident, and they fall into silence again, the topic of Will exhausted once more. Alana looks around the room and slips off her shoes, getting to her feet and heading for the ladder to his bookshelves. She is comfortable here, in his presence and amongst his things, much as she is in his kitchen. She, more than anyone, is at home around him.

He watches her above him, reading book spines and flicking through the leather-bound tomes he has held onto through a tapestry of countries. She’s seen most of them before, having helped him move into this office several years ago, but it’s been a while since she has afforded herself the time to browse through them. Alana always seems to be in transit – stopping in places for singular moments before heading somewhere else – and full of purpose; he wonders if this is the first time in a while that she has stopped to breathe.

He goes back to drawing, content to let her roam; be the one to pick the conversation back up again.

“It seems like centuries since you taught me,” she says after a while, and it’s almost to herself.

“Sometimes it seems that way to me too. Other times, as though it was just yesterday.”

He doesn’t look up from his sketch but he knows she’s looking at him because he can hear the smirk in her voice. “Your English was worse.”

“Are you saying it’s bad now?”

She cackles, and he listens to the heavy slide of a book going back into its place. He looks up at her.

“I’m sorry we couldn’t meet for dinner on Monday. We should make it Thursday, at seven.”

He invites her outright because he knows she’ll come. The prodding teases, the carefully intoned implications, they set the scene for her to say yes. She leaves him, thinks on them, thinks about him and Will Graham and things she shouldn’t do, and then she comes back and answers him a grinning yes. _Yes, Hannibal, I’ll come to dinner._

Climbing back down the ladder, Alana finds her coat, shrugs it on and waits until she has her shoes back on until she says anything. “I’ll see you then.”

 

He smiles. On his desk sits a sketch; a turtle with the world on its back, suspended above a pit of snakes.

 

 

 

 

 

Alana stays close to the front of his mind over the next few days, a constant hum somewhere close but out of reach. She wasn’t a piece of the plan he saw coming – the limitations of human nature, he supposes – but at the same time he thinks about what Bedelia said, how it would benefit him to spend time with people he likes. Alana is often a fixture at his dinner parties, filled with people he has no real interest in; she is a constant, sharp brightness in a sea of dull grey blurs, and it occurs to him that she may be a significant reason why the other guests are (mostly) still walking and talking and sucking precious breaths into their lungs.

 

 

 

 

 

His ribs feel full of bees when he opens the door to her several nights later, a thicket of wings buzzing against the cage around his heart. It’s unfamiliar, feeling as though he has no control over the actions of his own body. Hannibal is used to being in control down to the last muscles around his eyes, and it concerns him that something as simple as Alana knocking on his door has him questioning the firmness of his hold.

“Hi,” she says, easy and charming, and doesn’t wait for him to invite her in.

 

 

Wine brings out the desire in him.

Alana smells like the earth, like something green and growing and good. _Petrichor_ , he remembers. Earth after the rain. But what draws him to her is the same otherworldly scent found in old books – the smell of ground wood and terpene compounds; vanillin and anisol. He wants to read her skin like inked words on a page, baroque; count the notches on her spine and bend it back to palm his hand over her flesh. She is divergent and divergent again from other women he has met, not only a match for his intellect but a foil uncannily adept at pointing out his own pretension in exactly the places he tries to hide it. Truthfully, he enjoys it when she calls him out on his unacceptable behaviour, has high regard for her boldness. In Alana’s case it’s not insolence, but fact.

It’s quite strange, he realizes, to not want to see what’s inside her.

The oven timer dings. Alana takes a long sip of her beer and peers in through the door. “It doesn’t look ready,” she says over her shoulder.

Hannibal dons his oven mitts and Alana steps back, amused, to watch him. “You should trust me, Alana. I have made lasagne many times.”

“Well that I just don’t believe. You literally told me like ten minutes ago that you made filet mignon for dinner last night. Nobody who makes filet mignon on an even semi-regular basis has made _lasagne_ ‘many times’.” Her eyes are bright, the way they get when she’s stirred by her own teasing. He just grins and pulls the dish out of the oven, setting it on a chopping board.

“Americans do place their lasagnes on a very high pedestal.”

“You know I’m French-Canadian.”

He smiles again. “Fetch the plates, Alana.”

 

 

After dinner they listen to Mozart, Alana telling him about the students that seem to find it appropriate to proposition her after lectures. He thinks about ragout fin and smiles.

“I mean what do they think is gonna happen? I’m so captivated by their ramen skills and terrible hygiene that I just can’t say no?”

The diet is a problem. “You should be flattered that so many people think so highly of you.”

Alana rolls her eyes. “Of course, why didn’t I see it like that? All these undergrads objectifying me instead of listening to the words coming out of my mouth, I’m so grateful.”

She’s right, obviously, and she’s also perfectly aware he only said that to rile her up.

“You just love stirring the damn pot, don’t you?”

“Just yours, Alana, in very specific ways.”

Fighting a grin, she rearranges herself on the couch. “If I didn’t know any better, Dr Lecter, I’d think that was terribly-veiled innuendo.”

He likes that she can follow what he doesn’t say as well as he can, takes the bait he leaves for her. _Soon_ , he thinks, soon she’ll get over whatever lingering reservations she has and lean toward him, break the spell.

He doesn’t want to take advantage of her, Alana must come to this decision on her own, without anything more than a suggestion from him, or when she inevitably finds out what he is she will feel sick down to the very marrow of her bones.

He has planted the seed, but she must be the one to sow it.

“An astute observation,” he says, smiling, and watches her smile back.

“I’ve thought a lot about leaving the other night. Part of me feels like I made a mistake but there’s another part of me that still remembers that you used to be in charge of my career. It’s a strange thing to equate.”

“And why do you need to equate it?”

“I don’t know,” she says, and kisses him.

 

 


	3. part iii

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Hannibal talks about you often. He speaks of you as though you are a lioness. Dignified. Quick to hunt. Quick to protect. It seems he’s on the mark with the analogy.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So it has been an incredibly long time since this has been updated, but unfinished fics give me anxiety so now that our beautiful show is back on (and!!! um!!! things!!! have been revealed in the preview for this week's episode!!!! god I don't want to actually be into it but I am totally into it) I've been compelled to give this guy an ending. It's a hot mess. Bedelia makes an unnecessary and drawn out appearance because DAMN, GILLIAN ANDERSON, you finally fit into a character who isn't Dana Scully for me, and it is straight up awesome. Will's dogs also make an appearance, because I am in love with them. Will Graham is the saddest person in existence, which is news to no one but is still pretty depressing. Thesaurus.com, if it were a person, would deserve a kiss on the mouth. I think that about covers it.

Hannibal kisses her like she’s the last person on Earth.

His hands search out her skin, the pads of his fingers drawing over the creases of her elbows and down her arms. Her breath steals out of her lungs and into his mouth, down his throat, his tongue molten against her own as he presses her down into the cushions beneath them.

Common sense seems like it existed eons ago, an archaic concept that Alana no longer understands. She lets Hannibal kiss her, lets him take off her dress and prop her against the couch before he pulls aside her underwear and finds her with his mouth. She feels feral, unbridled, as she digs her fingers into his hair and lets him consume her. It’s intoxicating.

 

And after that, she doesn’t talk to him for three days.

 

 

 

 

Alana doesn’t like to avoid people, especially people like Hannibal who see such things as a personal affront, but she knows talking to him will stir up the guilt she’s now trying so hard to swallow down.

 

It doesn’t help that Will Graham wants to spend time in her dreams. While she sleeps he trembles in front of her eyes, a watery vision fraught with fear and doubt. No matter where she is, he is there too. Her guilt is expounded in the despair on his face, but she can do nothing except apologize as he gets pulled away on the wind.

She wakes in a sweat, a chill down her spine, and wishes things were a little more black and white.

 

 

 

 

Bedelia’s front door sends out an echo when Alana gives a tentative knock, as though the space behind it is just an empty cavern ready to mock any question she asks it.

The psychiatrist opens the door and is not expecting to see Alana’s face.

“You’re Alana Bloom,” Bedelia says, and Alana can’t figure out if she’s pleased or apprehensive.

“Yes. I’m sorry I came unannounced; Hannibal said he thought I should see you.”

Bedelia’s mouth quirks. “I’m retired.”

“Oh, no, I know, I don’t mean about me. About Abigail Hobbs. I don’t need a psychiatrist. Or… maybe I do. I probably do. But not right now.”

Standing back from the door, Bedelia gestures for Alana to come inside.

The interior of her home is quiet, stifled, like all the windows stay shut to keep the world out. It doesn’t feel like a home so much as a monastery – somewhere Bedelia has retreated to like a sanctuary. Alana follows her to the kitchen, and notices how similar it is to Hannibal’s. His presence is here, settled along the shelves of herbs and the cool granite of the countertops, and it makes her feel uncomfortable, as though he might be watching.

“I was about to pour some tea,” Bedelia says, her voice small in the large room. “Do you want some?”

“Sure.”

 

 

They sit on her armchairs – Bedelia regarding her over the lip of her mug, and Alana perching like a tense bird, muscles poised for flight. She feels slightly crazed opposite this perfectly calm, elegant woman, not a hair out of place. Alana looks down at her dress, the paisley suddenly so garish she can taste it in her mouth.

“You aren’t here to talk about Abigail Hobbs,” Bedelia says, seeing straight through her. She knew the moment she opened the door that Alana was not here under professional duress.

“No.”

“Will Graham, perhaps? I hear a great deal about him at the moment.”

“No. Well, sort of. I… I wanted to talk to you about Hannibal.”

A person without psychiatric training probably wouldn’t have picked up on it, but when she says Hannibal’s name Alana sees Bedelia’s demeanour change almost imperceptibly, though she can’t figure out exactly what it means.

“Oh. Is something wrong?”

“With Hannibal? No. The problem is definitely with me.”

Bedelia says nothing in response, seems content to let her stew, watch as she tries to give voice to the words simmering below the surface. Alana figures the other psychiatrist knows exactly why she’s here, and she can feel the heat blossoming across her cheeks as a further betrayal of her self-consciousness.

“Hannibal and I had… a moment, the other night, and I’m worried that it’s not so much a professional boundary I’ve crossed but an ethical one. My ties to Will and Hannibal – not to mention their ties to each other… to Abigail… I guess I’m just concerned I’ve made the wrong choice, even though at the time it felt like the right one.”

For a moment, Alana’s not sure whether Bedelia is planning on saying anything else at all, her steely gaze cutting yet unreadable. Then she blinks, sets down her mug with measured grace.

“I will tell you what I told Hannibal when he voiced a similar concern. You are both adults. You have a history of respect and friendship with each other, one that precedes Will Graham by a fair margin; you also both believe any romantic involvement with him on your behalf would be a bad idea. From where I sit, the boundaries you speak of seem imagined.”

Alana wants to tell her it’s easy for her to say that, Bedelia doesn’t know Will or the extent of her feelings for him. But she’s also right; Will does not become more grounded by the day, he seems to drift further and further away from it, and it’s not fair on anyone for her to wait around forever for him to find his way back to Earth. Bedelia continues to study her, composed and impassive. Then she continues her train of thought.

“Hannibal talks about you often. He speaks of you as though you are a lioness. Dignified. Quick to hunt. Quick to protect. It seems he’s on the mark with the analogy.”

“Hannibal loves his analogies.”

Bedelia allows herself a smirk. Alana sips her tea: soothing peppermint infused with a bite of cinnamon. The warmth of the cup beneath her fingers seeps through her skin, and she lets the gentle silence of the room wash over her.

“I don’t suppose you could answer me a question?” Bedelia asks suddenly, and there is something shifting behind her face again, a strange presence almost covered by her outward expression but not quite. It’s unsettling.

“Of course.”

“When you look at Hannibal, what do you see?”

Alana thinks a moment. Hannibal is the heavy feeling on her tongue after eating something sweet, the hum beneath her fingers when she plays the piano – familiar feelings that bring him to mind at the most unexpected times. But eventually she settles for something a little simpler, more tangible. “A friend.”

This confirms something for Bedelia, though Alana doesn’t know what. There is an uneasy feeling she gets from it, though, that makes her think it’s time to leave.

“Well, I think I’ve intruded on your day long enough.”

“It wasn’t an intrusion, Dr Bloom. You are as charming as Dr Lecter has described you to be.”

Alana smiles, flattered. “Thank you for seeing me. I just didn’t really… know who else to talk to who would understand.”

Bedelia shrugs. “Didn’t someone once say all good psychiatrists should be seeing a psychiatrist?”

“That sounds accurate,” Alana replies, and stands. She looks at Dr Du Maurier sitting on her armchair, taking another sip of tea, and she suddenly seems small in comparison to the room, to this large, empty house. Alana feels a pang of something in her chest, and is compelled to ask, “What do you think Hannibal sees you as?”

Bedelia smiles, and it almost seems sad. “A rabbit, struggling in the jaws of a wolf.”

 

 

 

 

Entirely unnerved by her encounter with Hannibal’s psych, Alana finds herself driving the familiar road to Wolf Trap and lets it take her all the way to Will’s house. She parks behind his dusty old Volvo and walks tentatively up to his front door, seeing the wagging tails of several dogs behind the screen.

“Will?”

She thinks of the last time she was here and it feels like a dream, but as she pushes open the door she sees the hole in the wall, feels a prickle on her lips, and everything is real – and painful – again. The lump of guilt in her throat sticks.

The dogs swarm her legs and she pats the shifting bodies she finds, comforted by their simple excitement.

“Where’s your dad, huh?” she asks them, and then she sees the back door is ajar.

Will sits on his back steps, fiddling with a fishing lure, and Alana sits down beside him.

“Didn’t think you’d risk coming here again,” he says, trying to make it a joke and failing terribly.

“I missed your dogs,” she replies, letting him off the hook. She can feel soot under her nails.

Will’s knee twitches up and down, and she doesn’t like that he is restless around her now, worried that he might do or say something wrong.

“I’m sorry I didn’t call before I came, I seem to be doing that a lot today. I just wanted to see how you were.”

“I’m breathing,” he says, but it sounds more like _I’m drowning_.

“That’s a start. Have you been sleeping?”

He doesn’t answer, which means no, or means yes but not in a way where it feels like sleeping, or means any number of things that aren’t good, and her heart breaks for him. She wants to tell him the real reason she came, and then she selfishly wants him to tell her that it doesn’t hurt to know she slept with Hannibal.

But she knows she can’t, not now that she is here next to him. It just seems cruel to burden him with it.

“I can hear you worrying about me, Alana.”

She closes her eyes, breathes, opens them. “I’m sorry. You know I can’t help it.”

“That’s unprofessional,” he says, and this time the joke manages to land. She shoves him with her shoulder, and her mouth warms into a smile.

 

 

 

 

She has one more stop after leaving Will, and it’s one she’s dreading.

 

Hannibal opens the door moments after she knocks, and she can’t help but raise an eyebrow.

“Did you literally drop everything you were doing and run to the door just now?”

“I did not _run_ , Alana Bloom.”

She can’t help a grin, until she remembers that she did a fair bit of running on him a few days ago. “I’m sorry I haven’t called. Or come over. Or spoken to you, at all.”

“I understand.” Hannibal widens the gap in the door, extends an arm towards his foyer. She enters, shrugs off her coat. It’s like a million other days, his hand hangs her coat on a hook as it has a million other times, but for some reason today feels different, like none of this has happened before. Context is everything, she supposes.

Her insides fizz, roiling as she follows him to the living room and eyes the couch as though it is a sentient being that knows exactly what she’s thinking. The fizz concentrates low in her gut.

“So,” Hannibal says, turning to sit on an armchair. Alana notices it actually has no arms, like the ones in Bedelia’s house. “Have you come to tell me that you are no longer able to see me in a romantic capacity?”

Alana rolls her eyes and momentarily forgets that she definitely came over with vaguely that intention. “You think you’re clever, don’t you?”

Hannibal smiles; that infuriating, self-assured smile that has spread across his face countless times and never made her anything but maddeningly endeared to him. Yes, he does think he’s clever.

“You always have to have people figured out. Why is that? Is it an ego thing? You just want feel superior to everyone?” She crosses her arms and Hannibal leans back in his chair, smiling his infuriating smile, letting her work herself up without a care in the world.

Alana bites her lip. She remembers what Bedelia said, thinks of Hannibal talking about her in a therapy session and comparing her to a lioness. It’s emboldening. She takes a deliberate step forward, then another. The toe of her boot hits Hannibal’s shoe. Taking in a steadying breath, she braces a hand on Hannibal’s shoulder and slides onto his lap, knees either side of his hips. His hands are hot where they settle on her thighs, and she can’t hold his gaze without blushing.

“I don’t like that you do this to me. You make me feel kind of like a crazy person.”

Hannibal’s gaze drops to her mouth, to her neck, the line of her collarbones. She flushes further under his roaming eyes, and rests her hands on his arms.

“That’s not my intention, Alana.”

She can feel his breath on her chest, tickling over her sternum and into her clavicle, sending a shiver all over her body. The rest of the room dissolves at the edge of her vision until there is nothing but this chair and Hannibal beneath her, solid and living and burning against her skin. He brushes her dress and the strap of her bra off her shoulder, mouths the exposed flesh there, drags his teeth gently over the bone. She gasps, every fibre of her being concentrated on the sensations Hannibal wants to draw from her. It’s been a long time since someone has made her feel so uninhibited.

Cupping his chin lightly in her fingers, Alana leans down and presses her lips to Hannibal’s, inhaling sharply as his hands slide around her ass to pull her closer.

She pulls back, looms over him a little. “Bullshit.”

He grins, kisses her again, steals a taste of her mouth with his tongue. Then he leans into her ear, and she can feel his lips when he speaks, his voice barely audible. “Tell me what you want me to do to you.”

Alana whimpers, a totally involuntary hiccup of noise that makes Hannibal grin. It shouldn’t surprise her that he’s so easily gained the upper hand, he does it all the time without breaking a sweat, and it shouldn’t turn her on as much as it does. She swallows, then breathes in and feels her whole body quake under his hands. A palm rests over his heart, and she can feel the steady rhythm of it blending with her own erratic rabbit-thump.

“Take me to the bedroom.”

 

 

 

Later, Alana stares at the ceiling in a haze as Hannibal dozes next to her. She turns to him, studies his face until he cracks an eye open and she grins, caught.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you sleep before,” she says. Hannibal is always awake, always watching and hypothesising. It’s strange to see this side of him.

“I don’t make a habit of it.”

“What, sleeping?”

He chuckles. “You are incorrigible, Alana. Ever since I first met you, you have always had to have the last word.”

“Just because you’re quieter about it doesn’t mean you’re any less salty than me, Hannibal,” she retorts, propping herself up on an elbow.

He is silent for a moment, then gets up and pulls on a robe. “I have kept a lot of your work, did you know that?”

Alana watches him throw open the doors of his closet and find a large, unmarked box on one of the shelves. He brings it to the bed.

“Why?” she asks, opening it immediately and seeing her scrawled handwriting.

Hannibal sits down next to her. “Nostalgia, I suppose.”

Alana picks up one of the pages, reads through notes on PhD candidates she can remember writing so vividly, cramped into a chair in Hannibal’s office opposite a myriad of hard passes. She can also remember the strange giddiness she felt in his presence back then, the little joys she took from his amusement at her verbal sparring with him that have not gone away.

“You had very assertive handwriting, even then.”

“Assertive is one word for it. Chicken scratch is another.”

She keeps reading, aware of Hannibal’s eyes on her, but unaware of their intent. She doesn’t know that he is counting her ribs, the freckles on her back; committing the topography of her body to memory for later use. He doesn’t want to, but he knows he must.

“I went to Will’s yesterday,” she confesses. She places the pages of notes back into their box, trying not to look at Hannibal, trying not to see his reaction.

“Oh?”

“I didn’t tell him… about what happened. Us. I wanted to, but then I remembered I’m a coward.”

“Nonsense. You are many things, Alana, but a coward is not one of them.” He sets the box down on the floor, turns toward her properly. “Will means a lot to you. He means a lot to me, for what it is worth. But I also think that it is perhaps not in his best interests to know about this right now.”

“And what is ‘this’?”

Hannibal’s eyes narrow, and she knows, _knows_ that he’s thinking of the most irritating way to phrase his answer. “Two people… enjoying one another’s company.”

Alana snorts.

She leans over, kisses him, shivers at the memory of his hands palming her thighs. “Fine,” she says, watching the lines at the edge of his eyes crinkle. “Be ambiguous.”

 

* * *

 

 

He tells himself that one day she will be glad of the ambiguity, glad that things between them were never concrete. She deserves to be able to stomach the truth, live with herself after it – for however long that life may last.

For Hannibal does not want to kill Alana Bloom, but he knows how to do it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading, if you made it this far! You are all number one stunners.


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